Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Today was the day! MissG started at school. She was excited and nervous. I was nervous but sure we'd done everything to get ready.

We had a quick visit to the classroom yesterday to drop off her Safe Hiding Place Tokens and a box of "fidget toys" (some of her favourite things to hold and de-stress with- a plastic toy snake, a wooden toy dinosaur, a soft toy kangaroo, a juggling ball, a slinky...).

We had chatted about using the toilet, needing to eat some of the food in her lunch box for morning tea and saving some for lunch time. What to do if she needed help with anything. We talked about the fun things she would do. We talked about who she would know in her class . We went over the Safe Hiding procedure so many times......

We were ready.

Most of the new Kindy kids went straight to the classroom but MissG and a friend of hers who also has older siblings at the school knew that the "right" way to start the day is to go to morning assembly, so we asked the Teacher if they could do that. They lined up with the other kids in their composite Kindergarten/Year 1 class, listened to the morning assembly then cheerfully walked off to class with the rest of the kids. Hubby and I wandered off to find something to do for 6 hours!

We did some dishes, some cleaning, a bit of grocery shopping, planned the budget for the fortnight, had lunch.... went for a drive to get us out of the house.... waited....
And when it was time to go and pick the kids up, we were told by MissG that she had a "great" first day! Yay!!

There were of course a few hiccups reported by her Teacher. She used her Safe Hiding Space once when she was a bit overwhelmed (which is not a hiccup at all- it is good!!), but a few tears and a moment of frustration over the way a rotating group activity was working.

Overall, though, MissG's report about her day was positive, and that is what we hoped for. If she feels she had a great day, I call that a big success!!

If you are looking around the blog, please be patient if you find links that no longer work, as I will need to go through old posts and relink them manually.

If you are looking for something specific, the search function at the top right of the page will still work as long as you use the right key words. You can also look for things by using the labels cloud also on the right of the page.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

You've probably noticed I haven't been blogging much lately. This is partly because I am very pregnant and exhausted. It is mostly because I am so busy learning some new thinking.

I have had the good fortune to have met some new friends. New friends are usually a good thing anyway, but in this instance what makes it so awesome is that, due to their life experiences, these new friends think very differently than any other adult friends I've had in the past. And they are challenging me in ways I didn't anticipate.

I will be writing more about this process at "Different kinds of normal" in a while. I have a post still in draft form there, but it's going to be a while before it's ready as there is so much going on in my mind around it.

The impact these new thoughts and learning I'm doing will have on this blog is that the blog name and URL will soon be changing.

This blog is about my journey parenting my Autistic children. I want to keep the focus there, as a way of recording things for the future, and as a way of communicating with other parents who are on similar journeys.

The name I chose for this blog initially is a good reflection of where I was at a year ago. But I am no longer comfortable with it. I am concerned that it has too many negative implications. I am also concerned that it sends the wrong message if people don't read the explanation I wrote. Words and their meanings, both official and implied, are so important. I do not want mine to be hurtful, misleading, confusing or offensive to anyone.

So- a change is due.

When I have made the necessary adjustments I will post the details of the new URL on the Facebook page. I will also be creating a new Facebook page with the new name, but will leave the old one active for a while so that people who want to come over to the new one have a chance to see what's going on.

Please be patient- there will no doubt be hiccups as I go through the process of changing links in articles and such. Hopefully I won't lose too many of you along the way.

The key thing is that I will still be blogging here, and sharing my journey with you..... and what a journey it is. Learning, growing, changing, evolving. Hoping to become a better person and a better parent as I go along.

All content on this blog is written by Michelle Sutton, unless otherwise stated. Please do not use content from this blog without gaining permission from the author. To contact the author please email michellesuttonwrites@gmail.com